Anticipation, Dread, and Moving Forward

Photo: This picture… that child. I suppose it was all worth it. By the way, that cake? 1/2 sheet at Wegmans. $48. Worth every single penny. Best cake I’ve ever had.

I don’t know where to begin. There is so much to write about. I’m not in the best headspace and I’m tired for so many reasons. Let’s start with the doctor and we’ll work our way down.

I saw the surgeon this morning. My husband and I sat in a cramped little room, barely big enough for the exam table, two chairs and a desk with a computer running Windows Vista on it. My husband kept me occupied by commenting on the art hanging on the wall (why is hospital art always dreadful? Or was it dreadful because of my headspace?).

The surgeon has got to be barely older than I am. She felt all around and asked me questions. She asked me to give a recap of what’s going on, which I did. “You’ve got it right, pretty much. I looked at the images, and I can say that not much has changed. If it has grown, it has barely grown… maybe the size of the tip of this pen,” she said.

She suggested a needle biopsy, saying that it is less invasive than going in there and taking it out. Furthermore, it seems that she’ll probably have to go in there to remove it anyway. The biopsy will tell us how aggressive she will have to be. So, I’m scheduled for this Wednesday. The results won’t come until Monday. Another week of waiting and wondering.

She went through the scenarios of what the results could be. She said that there was a 75% likelihood that the results will come back benign. The is a 20% chance that it could be this strange non-cancer but almost cancer thing that would require surgery and hormone therapy (there is a real medical name for it that begins with an A, but I didn’t write it down and I can’t find it via Google). There is a small chance that it’s Stage 0 cancer, which requires radiation and all sorts of other jazz after surgery. There is an even smaller chance that it’s invasive, serious cancer, which means the full blown throw everything at it therapy. I tried to get her to tell me what she thought my lump is and she wouldn’t tell me. She kept dodging: “It could be a lipoma, but I don’t think it is because it doesn’t have the same shape…” that kind of thing. I kept waiting for her to say, “I’ve seen this a million times. It’s nothing. Let’s cut it out so that you feel better” or something, but she just wouldn’t do it.

So. Needle biopsy Wednesday. Results on Monday. I have so much to do between now and then that I think the time will pass quickly. I guess I should put up a warning now, though: I have no idea what condition I’ll be in on Wednesday, so I don’t know if I’ll be blogging. Hopefully, I’ll have the energy to put up a quick [Fail] post to check in and let you know how things went.

In the meantime, there is much else to celebrate. Like there are onions growing in the garden. Or that our big party for Ursa Minor was a huge success. There was a lot of joy here as I grilled jerk chicken and marinated chicken kabobs. Ten children ran over every single inch of my lawn. I’m lucky that our tulips and daisies survived, let alone the raised beds! Even the stone fence saw action on Saturday!

Yesterday, despite my exhaustion, we went to church in the morning and came home to finally, finally put together the bunk beds!

It is incredible how much the room has changed now. It’s a bit intense, actually. The physical footprint of the bunk bed in the room is so imposing–it’s large… so much larger than the cribs! It’s also quite beautiful. The wood looks lovely against the yellow and the blue of the walls. My color consultant was also perfect again! The Star Wars sheets look excellent against the yellow!

What strikes me about the beds also is how small the boys are while laying on them. They seem baby-small on the large mattresses, swallowed up by the covers and sheets. They hide and giggle under the duvets at the moment, feeling like kings of some vast territory. The beds present two truths right now: they reveal just how big the boys are and how much they’ve grown over these years. Yet, they foreshadow how large they will become. I understand that they may very well outgrow these beds at some time. Isn’t that incredible?

And for me, the beds present new physical challenges. Namely, I have to make real beds now! I have to get these sheets on those far corners! Gone are the days of quickly folding a baby blanket and throwing it over a bassinet! Gone, even, are the days of throwing a fitted sheet on a toddler mattress in under a minute! Even still, gone are the days when doing a house-worth of sheets would be one easy, single load in the washing machine! And to make them again now involves spreading my arms wide, stretching and pulling and reaching… it’s work! These are real-sized beds for real-size people!

And the cribs? They are up in the attic. The Husband put them up there without too much fight. I don’t think it’s much of a secret that he’s thinking about a third baby too. Here is other interesting news we learned today: if I need to get hormone therapy, our dreams of a third baby might be lost. My weekly prayers and hopes for a daughter gone, poof, just like that. We think that small things are powerless in this world. Yet, a lump smaller than the tip of my finger could be mightier than I ever imagined.

By the way, the car is still in the shop. Still don’t know what the problem is. So we just keep flushing $45 down the drain with this rental…

I’m tired, Dear Reader. When it rains, it pours.

I hope to see you Wednesday. Until then, enjoy some sunshine and take care.

2 Replies to “Anticipation, Dread, and Moving Forward”

Oh, sending you virtual hugs. You have a lot going on. I completely understand. Sometimes it is in the midst of a raging storm of business that we find the strength to weather on. Weather on dear sister. We understand if you need to take a break. Focus on what you can do each day. That’s it. That’s all.